"Shall I say to the children that this person is not a gentleman, and thus destroy his influence? or shall I pass it over in silence, and thus leave them to draw the natural inference that all I have said on the subject is only a woman's whim?"
Mr. Mann, the editor, gave a full reply through the Journal, from which I have here quoted part of a paragraph. He closes by offering a prize of the "eternal gratitude of all decent men" to the discoverer of a remedy or antidote for the evil.
[74] Since these suggestions were first given to the public, several excellent books for children have been published, constructed on a similar plan to that here recommended. It will generally be found advantageous to teach the vowels first, and then to teach such consonants as combine with the long sound of the vowel; as, for example, first o; then g, h, l, n, and s, when the child can read go, ho, lo, no, and so. After this, e may be learned, and then b, m, and s, when the child can read be, bee, me, and see. Then these may be combined as see me; lo, see me; see me ho; lo, see me ho, etc. The idea is, that every letter and combination of letters be used as fast they are learned.
[75] In a former chapter, the necessity of moral and religious education was dwelt upon at length. The importance of the Scriptures as a text-book, containing as they do the only perfect code of morals known to man, and the objections sometimes urged against their use, were duly considered. I wish here simply to add, that their exclusion from our schools would be even more sectarian than their perverted use; for the atheistical plan, which forbids the entrance of the Bible into multitudes of our schools, under the pretense of excluding sectarianism, shuts out Christianity, and establishes the influence of a single sect, that would dethrone the Creator, and break up every bond of social order.
[76] The following paragraph is from the Massachusetts Colony Laws of 1642; "Forasmuch as the good education of children is of singular behoof and benefit to any commonwealth, and whereas many parents and masters are too indolent and negligent of their duty in that kind, it is ordered that the select-men of every town in the several precincts and quarters, where they dwell, shall have a vigilant eye over their brethren and neighbors, to see, first, that none of them shall suffer so much barbarism in any of their families as not to teach, by themselves or others, their children and apprentices so much learning as may enable them perfectly to read the English tongue, and knowledge of the capital laws, upon penalty of twenty shillings for each neglect therein."